Flash Gordon 4 - The Time Trap of Ming XIII (7 page)

“You should have let me clean out that area last month when I finalized that neurogas formula I made for the pig men of Pogoland. I could have wiped the place clean of all potential danger. If Flash and Dale have fallen into the hands of the golden ants or the salamanders, I’ll never forgive you.”

“Defoliation is not our way here in the forest kingdom, Zarkov,” Prince Barin replied patiently. “We just don’t believe in that kind of thing.”

“You’d rather have anyone who drives through that section take his life into his hands—is that it?” demanded Zarkov, his flesh turning slightly pink.

“Come now, Zarkov.” Prince Barin smiled. “I don’t think anything has happened to them.”

“Then where are they? We know they left the spaceport over five hours ago! Why you have to keep this city so damned isolated is beyond me!”

“Roads were invented by generals bent on conquest,” Prince Barin reminded Zarkov. “Keeping ourselves isolated here has saved us time and again from the depredations of Ming the Merciless and his armies.”

“The spaceport could have been built closer to the capital,” said Zarkov, grumbling. “I tried to construct one on the slopes overlooking the city, but your minister of ecology voted me down.”

“And well he might,” Prince Barin responded. “You’d have us ripping out trees to clear airfields, polluting the air with burning wood, and ruining the water table throughout the kingdom. We’d be a desert, Zarkov, a desert!”

“Better a desert than a tangled wasteland,” muttered Zarkov, “crawling with all kinds of goblins and beasties.” There was a pause. “Besides, I still maintain that a forest is the perfect place for an invading army to hide out. You’re too decent a person, Prince Barin, to believe in all the evil things that lie in wait out there around you. It’s the good who wind up paying for the bad.”

Prince Barin laughed heartily. “You’re really testy today, Zarkov. I don’t know what’s got into you.”

Zarkov slammed his fist into one of the plyoform chairs. “I’m worried about Flash and Dale. It just isn’t like them to be late.”

“We could set out on the superway and meet them,” Prince Barin suggested.

Zarkov shook his head. “It would take too long.”

“Then how can we help find them?”

“The airscout,” said Zarkov.

“Not the new one,” Prince Barin replied nervously.

“Why not?”

“It hasn’t passed its emission, tests yet. And you haven’t flown it, either.”

“Listen, when I design a new rocket, it stays designed!” barked Zarkov. “You think we have to go through those tests all the time? Not with Zarkov’s solid-state circuitry! I’ve got that flailing problem licked, I tell you. Just because the prototype went down into the Sea of Kyrile—”

“Putting three of my best scientists in the hospital for months on end,” interrupted Prince Barin.

“—doesn’t mean it’s going to crack up this time! Besides, this airscout is a one-man affair. It can’t go wrong.”

Prince Barin waved his hand despairingly. “Take it then. I see you’re bent on looking for Flash and Dale—and good luck to you.”

Zarkov sulked. “I don’t think your heart’s in this, Prince Barin.”

“Zarkov, what do you want from me? Hymns? Best wishes? Soft soap? I can give you anything. I agree that you should try to find them. There. Is that better?”

Zarkov brightened. “I’ll check the stations along the superway again. Then, if there’s no news of them, I’ll take up the airscout.” His eyes gleamed. “You want to come along?”

Prince Barin blanched. “Next time, Zarkov. Next time perhaps.”

Zarkov shrugged. “Well, I know you’ve got to prepare the palace and the public square for the anniversary celebration of Mongo’s liberation from the tryanny of Ming the Merciless. I don’t want to tire you out with my little scouting expedition.”

The door at the far end of the throne room opened abruptly. Prince Barin turned from the center of the room and beckoned to the man in the door.

“Approach, Minister.”

Zarkov watched the stolid, muscular minister of intelligence approach. Hamf was a bleak, gray-eyed man with absolutely no expression and an enormous bald forehead. He seemed to have no eyebrows. All there was of him seemed caged in the bulbous skull above the small, pinched, chinless face.

“Thank you, Your Excellency.”

“Well?” Prince Barin looked over his shoulder at Hamf as he came up to him.

“Sire,” said Hamf, glancing at Zarkov covertly, “I have a confidential report.”

“Zarkov won’t leak it,” Prince Barin said confidently. “Speak up.”

“Yes, sire,” Hamf said nervously. “We have intercepted a message from Mingo to an outpost near the Mingo-Arboria border.”

“Is it important?” asked Prince Barin. “You always bring these notes to me. I like to read the ones dealing with the spicy amours of Mingo’s minions, but I’m tired of hearing about the latest military appropriations at their palace.”

“This is a bit more important, sire,” said Hamf. “We’ve translated a code message and interpreted it. Sire, a force of undesirables is building up on the Mingo-Arboria border near Outpost Daj.”

Zarkov glowered. “Undesirables?” he boomed out. “What does that mean? Have they got chicken pox? Mumps? Poison ivy?”

Hamf gave Zarkov a withering glare. “It’s a euphemism for enemy troops, Dr. Zackov.”

“It’s Zarkov, and don’t you forget it,” snapped Zarkov. “Enemy troops, eh?” He turned to Prince Barin. “Do you believe this?”

Prince Barin rubbed his chin slowly. “I’m inclined to be skeptical. We’ve had no other hint at all of activity in that region. I’m going to think it over, Hamf. Thank you very much.”

Hamf glanced from Prince Barin to Zarkov and started to back away. “Yes, sire.”

“I believe it,” Zarkov said suddenly, eying Prince Barin. “You’re too optimistic, Prince Barin, about people. I never will understand you. You don’t trust machinery at all, but you trust people. Me, I’m the opposite. I don’t trust people as far as I can throw them. But I do trust machinery. Now, what kind of a madman is it who trusts Mingolites?”

Prince Barin flushed. “You’re calling me a fool, Zarkov?”

“Not a fool. An optimist. A thin line separates the two.” Zarkov wheeled on Hamf. “Who are these undesirables, Hamf?”

Hamf’s tiny mouth pursed. “We don’t really know, Dr. Zackov. We’ve kept tabs on all of Ming’s state troops. This is apparently a new division. We don’t know where it comes from. Nor do we know who heads it up.”

“That’s important?” asked Zarkov.

“Yes. Because we know where every one of Ming’s generals is stationed right now. If this force is preparing for an assault, we’d like to know who heads it. Then we could analyze its
modus operandi
.”

Zarkov nodded. “Got you. You get back to central intelligence and keep on the laserphone, Hamf. Prince Barin wants you to concentrate on that report and find out if there’s even a glimmer of truth in it. Ming would try to throw the capital in an uproar on a day set aside for a celebration like this one, wouldn’t he?”

Hamf nodded sadly.

“Now get moving,” snapped Zarkov.

Hamf left the throne room.

Prince Barin shook his head. “Zarkov, you’re something else again. Why do you think this piece of intelligence is accurate?”

“Obviously that something is keeping Flash and Dale out there in the forest.”

“You mean you think they’ve stumbled across that concentration of unknown troops? Is that it?”

“How can I know for sure?” Zarkov yelled, striding up and down furiously, flailing his arms in the air and making the celluloceram floor shake with the tread of his boots. “It’s a possibility, anyway.”

“The minute you see anything out of the ordinary, call me by ship’s laserphone.” Prince Barin watched Zarkov alertly.

Zarkov halted, face to face with the prince.

“Right, then,” he said, made an about-face, and bounded across the throne room to the door.

All Arboria lay below him as he rose in the airscout through the immense oaks and larches that grew around the forest kingdom’s capital. Zarkov looked down once and saw the palace pass by beneath him.

He pressed the retrorocket activator, jockeyed the controls, set the course computer for point between the spaceport-Arboria superway and the Mingo-Arboria border, and leaned back in the plyoform seat, arms folded across his broad chest.

“It’s doing beautifully,” he said to himself, scanning the dials and digital readout ports that cluttered the console in front of him. “I’m glad I simplified the design of the board. It’s maddening to have to read fifty-two dials all at once; forty-five isn’t so bad at all.”

The airscout mounted the heavens, heading in a direction away from Arboria. The last Zarkov saw of the city was the spire of the House of Meditation as it vanished to the rear of the city.

The dense primeval forest of Mongo stretched out far below him.

Zarkov picked up the laserphone, punched out the call numbers of the spaceport, and was immediately in touch with the spaceport commissioner.

“Any news of Flash Gordon?” Zarkov boomed out.

“Nay, sire,” said the voice of the commissioner. “But then, there isn’t much traffic today. Holiday and all that”

“Roger,” said Zarkov, remembering his flyboy days in England on Earth.

The airscout passed over the thin winding thread that was the superway. Zarkov flicked the switch to manual control and took the wheel in his hands. He watched through the bubbleglass and followed the thin white line through the jungle around it.

He could see nothing at all.

“Calling zee five six, zee five six,” a voice said on the laserphone.

Zarkov lifted the laserphone. “Zarkov.”

“Report from the border,” said the voice of Hamf. “My agent found a corpse in the woods. Dead for several hours. One of our agents. Vanished two years ago. He’d been”—Hamf choked—“he’d been surgically debrained, Zarkov. Total massive frontal lobotomy. Evidence of electrode implants in his skull.”

Zarkov swallowed. “Good god, Hamf!”

“Something’s out there, Zarkov. Something evil.”

“I’ll find it,” Zarkov promised.

He hung up the laserphone.

A sudden tremor made the airscout buck slightly in the air. Zarkov glanced at the dials. The needles were all bouncing, the digital numbers flying around in a mad whirl.

Zarkov gripped the wheel, trying to steady the airscout.

“What’s going on?” he muttered.

The airscout lurched and descended rapidly.

It was hurtling down on its side like a dead thing.

Zarkov fought the wheel. The flailing syndrome!

No response.

Tiny yellow puffs of smoke curled out of the end of the console. Zarkov could smell burning plyoplast.

The hydrogen fission cell must be out of control! If it burned through the lead sheathe, he’d be radiated.

The airscout turned over on its back, as if sensing its own imminent death.

Zarkov slammed against the ceiling. The airscout flipped back again. Then, with a tremendous crash, it hit.

“W
ell, here we are,” said Kial, “but where are we?”

Lari shook his head. “Don’t ask me, Kial.”

“I’m not, stupid! I’m just saying it.”

“Then say what you mean,” Lari retorted.

They were in a part of the forest kingdom that resembled every other part. There were primitive palm trees, giant cinnamon ferns, arrested conifers, and strange creeping vines that twisted among all the other growth.

“Where’s the superway?” Lari asked suddenly.

“Dummy, that’s what I’ve been trying to figure out for five minutes.”

They had come through time and space as soon as they had activated their belt packs. However, in their haste to remove themselves from the vicinity of the Spaceport Inn, Kial had apparently miscalculated slightly either on their timing or on their siting. Whatever, they were now in a part of the forest kingdom that did not remotely resemble any part that they had seen before.

“Can’t we get back to the Tempendulum by setting our time packs?” Lari asked tremulously.

“No! We’d get back to the proper time, but we’d be no nearer the Tempendulum. I marked my digital grids correctly. Something has probably gone wrong with the space pack. It’s off.”

“What do we do now?” Lari asked timidly.

“How do I know?” Kial asked growlingly.

“You’re supposed to know. You’re smarter.”

“Who says?”

“You always say.”

“Then it’s true.” Kial shook his head. “Well, we could always walk in a straight line. Eventually we’d cross the superway.” He snapped his fingers as his eyes lighted up. “That’s it?”

“What? Walk forever?”

“No! We described a straight line across the forest kingdom from east to west. Since the superway from the spaceport to Arboria proper runs north and south, we’re bound to intersect the superway somewhere.”

“But how do we do it without walking?”

“With our space-travel packs, dummy. Now, look, we’ll set our grids to a point one mile to the east of us. We make that flight, check out the area, and then go another mile east.”

“But what if the superway lies to the west?”

“When we get to the end of the forest, we’ll come back, dummy.”

“It seems—”

“Set your grids, and shut up!”

They found the superway in thirty-five minutes. In the middle of the pavement, they looked up and down and wondered exactly where they were in relation to Flash and Dale.

“Well,” said Kial decisively, “let’s go south. Then, if we don’t find the wrecked jetcar, we’ll come back the other way.”

“All right,” said Lari. “I’m tired, though, Kial. Have you got anything to eat or drink?”

“You should have filled up on steaming mead last night instead of all that hanky-panky,” snorted Kial. “I’ve got a kelp energy bar, if you’re interested.”

“I’d eat anything,” said Lari. “Even an algae sand on rye.”

They munched on the kelp energy bars and then began the hopscotching pattern down the superway.

Suddenly Kial held up his hand. “Shh!”

“What is it?” Lari asked softly.

“Quiet! I can’t hear if you talk.”

“Why didn’t you tell me not to, then?”